UKIP press Ashton on CND

Baroness Ashton has been quizzed further over allegations that she accepted funding from Soviet Bloc countries for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmement when she was its treasurer in the early 1980s.

UKIP MEP David Campbell Bannerman said an audit of CND's accounts in 1983 had found nearly 40% of its funds could not be traced to their original donors and it declined to say where the money came from.

He asked Baroness Ashton to confirm she had never accepted money from client states of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of Great Britain or other communist sympathisers, saying EU states who had suffered under communist rule deserved a "clear answer".

Baroness Ashton said she had ordered the first-ever audit of CND's accounts during her time there.

"I did not take any direct money from any communist country," she said.

See the full exchanged from the EU's Foreign Affairs Committee here.